page_title: American frontier
section_title: Hispanics
hierarchical_section_title: American frontier / Social history / Race and ethnicity / Hispanics
caption_attribution_description: The Mission Xavier del Bac is an impressive site about 10 miles south of Tucson, AZ. The outside is gleaming white and the inside is a mix of colors - it was definitely worth a trip to visit this Mission.
context_page_description: The American frontier includes the geography, history, folklore, and cultural expression of life in the forward wave of American expansion that began with English colonial settlements in the early 17th century and ended with the admission of the last remaining western territories as states in 1912. This era of massive migration and settlement was particularly encouraged by President Thomas Jefferson following the Louisiana Purchase, giving rise to the expansionist philosophy known as "Manifest Destiny" and the frontierist "Frontier Thesis".
  A frontier is a zone of contact at the edge of a line of settlement. Leading theorist Frederick Jackson Turner went deeper, arguing that the frontier was the defining process of American civilization: "The frontier," he asserted, "promoted the formation of a composite nationality for the American people." He theorized it was a process of development: "This perennial rebirth, this fluidity of American life, this expansion westward...furnish[es] the forces dominating American character."
context_section_description: The great majority of Hispanics who had been living in the former territories of New Spain remained and became American citizens in 1848. The 10,000 or so Californios lived in southern California and after 1880 were overshadowed by the hundreds of thousands of arrivals from the east. Those in New Mexico dominated towns and villages that changed little until well into the 20th century. New arrivals from Mexico arrived, especially after the Revolution of 1911 terrorized thousands of villages all across Mexico. Most refugees went to Texas or California, and soon poor barrios appeared in many border towns. Early on there was a criminal element as well. The California "Robin Hood", Joaquin Murieta, led a gang in the 1850s which burned houses, killed miners, and robbed stagecoaches. In Texas, Juan Cortina led a 20-year campaign against Anglos and the Texas Rangers, starting around 1859.
caption: The Spanish mission of San Xavier del Bac, near Tucson, founded in 1700
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